no title

Berhalter Hire Cements Front-office Shakeup

By: Adam Jardy

The Columbus Dispatch - November 06, 2013 07:27 PM

The immensity of today’s news was not lost on Anthony Precourt.

After announcing Gregg Berhalter as the team’s new coach and sporting director, the team’s investor-operator cemented a number of changes in the Crew’s hierarchy -- and nothing in his background in the investment management industry could measure up.

“I’ve never made a hire of this significance,” he said. “I feel a lot of pressure. It’s our first decision that really changes the culture of the club. I’m excited because I feel like we go the guy that was at the top of our list.”

Now, Precourt just has to trust that he got it right. Berhalter will assume control over the team’s technical side, while Mark McCullers will serve exclusively as club president and not also as general manager. It’s a move that will allow for a more streamlined decision-making process, but one that comes with some risk as well.

In essence, Berhalter is now responsible for all of the Crew's technical decisions.

“We talked a lot about different structures and the structure needed to match the person’s skill-set,” Precourt said. “I just felt overwhelmingly confident that Gregg was the man to handle both. Just the way his soccer mind, the more you talk to him, you see he has the perspective to be a head coach. I think it’s efficient in terms of making decisions. It creates a sense of accountability.”

ESPN analyst Alexi Lalas, who played with Berhalter on the U.S. national team, said the situation is what every coach wants.

“The more ability you have to retain that power in the decision-making process, the safer you feel and I understand that,” he said. “I’m not one that believes that a head coach can stick his head in the sand and not be aware of the unique realities that exist in MLS. It is very much buyer beware, and you need to come in with your eyes open and a general understanding.”

To assist with the jobs, Berhalter will be hiring a director of soccer operations to help with the technical side of things. He will also be hiring a coaching staff.

Berhalter said he has watched more than 15 Crew games and that he is sufficiently well-versed to make roster decisions in advance of the Nov. 26 deadline. His ties to Europe could also impact where the Crew draws some of its players.

“You rely on quality information and when you have an established network you get quality information,” he said. “I know there will be a lot of agents from Europe reaching out to me to recommend players and we’ll take a look at that. I believe that we want to continue to focus on Central America, South America and Europe in terms of where we’re looking for our foreigners, but we also have domestically a lot of players are coming from America and we want to focus on that and we want to know the American market as best as we can to be able to make good decisions on players.”< /p>

For McCullers, his job is now exclusively focused on the business side of the club. The Crew has a longstanding goal of selling naming rights to Crew Stadium – not to mention reaching 10,000 season-ticket holders – and McCullers should be able to devote more time to those pursuits.

“He’s our senior executive,” Precourt said of McCullers. “He’s our chief. He has a lot of responsibility in running the overall club, from being our leader in the community, being a leader of our staff, setting our budgets and our business plans, having an opinion on how to allocate resources at the club level. He has the experience of a GM, which is going to be helpful. It’s an invaluable resource when a president has the knowledge that he has on the soccer operations on our roster and on the cap.”

McCullers said the move has been years in the making.

“We’ve been talking about the need to move the general manager responsibilities off of my plate and into the competition division of the organization,” he said. “This was the time and Gregg’s the right person to do that. We’re always looking at ways to improve the player experience and to make the improvements necessary to make our club a success and to give our coach the opportunities to succeed. Gregg is an innovative person. He’s a progressive coach, so he brings a lot of those concepts and ideas to the table. It just made sense for the organization have him guiding that part of our club.”

Added Precourt, “I talk a lot about our culture, and culture is everything to me. For Gregg to be able to hand-pick his assistant coaches and scouting department and build out the soccer operations for our club and be able to have his touch all over it will be ideal over the long run in building a culture that helps us be a consistent winner and have repeatable processes year in and year out. I feel very comfortable that Gregg has the right skill set to assume both of those roles.”